


It 1 (!' I 



THE CENTENARY EXERCISES IN 
HONOR OF THE LATE SENATOR 
JUSTIN S. MORRILL, BY THE STATE 
OF VERMONT, WAS CHARACTERIZED 
BY ADDRESSES OF UNUSUAL MERIT. 

AS AN EXPRESSION OF APPRECIA- 
TION HIS SON, JAMES S. MORRILL, 
DESIRED TO PUBLISH THEM IN BOOK 
FORM, IN WHICH WORK HE WAS 
ENGAGED AT THE TIME OF HIS 
DEATH WHICH OCCURRED SUDDENLY 
ON JULY 26™ AT HIS STRAFFORD 
HOME. 

THE WORK WAS COMPLETED AND 
IS NOW BEING DISTRIBUTED BY 
HIS AUNT, MISS LOUISE S. SWAN. 

STRAFFORD, VERMONT 
SEPTEMBER 1, 1910 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 

CENTENARY EXERCISES CELEBRATED BY 
THE STATE OF VERMONT AT MONTPELIER 
APRIL FOURTEENTH NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND TEN IN HONOR OF THE BIRTH OF 
JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL WHO WAS FOR 
TWELVE YEARS A MEMBER OF THE HOUSE 
OF REPRESENTATIVES AND FOR OVER 
THIRTY YEARS A UNITED STATES SENATOR 



PUBLISHED NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TEN 
BY THE MORRILL PRESS FULTON NEW YORK 






YHjOn-O W i wuL*JL_ S . S 



>ASfe/V\_ 



ism 



ON April 14, 1910, the State of Vermont, at 
Montpelier, celebrated in a dignified manner, 
yet with the simplicity well suited to the man and 
the occasion, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
Justin Smith Morrill, whose death occurred on 
December 28, 1898. The audience included many of 
State-wide and National fame who came to do honor 
to the memory of this statesman. 



CONTENTS 



PROGRAM OF EXERCISES I 

ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR GEORGE H. PROUTY 5 

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 9 

ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 27 

ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 39 

ADDRESS OF COLONEL CURTIS S. EMERY 5 1 
ADDRESS OF HONORABLE HORACE W. BAILEY 
TRIBUTES 



61 



PROGRAM OF EXERCISES 

HIS EXCELLENCY 

GOVERNOR GEORGE H. PROUTY, LL.D. 

PRESIDING 

MUSIC Largo from "New World Symphony" (Dvorak) 

SINGING BY CONGREGATION "America" 

INVOCATION Rev. J. Edward Wright, D.D. 

SCRIPTURE READING Rev. Stanley F. Blomfield, B.A. 

MUSIC " The Homeland " (Hanscon) 

ADDRESS AND READING OF LETTERS 

Gov. George H. Prouty 

MUSIC String Quartette from Suite (Raff) 

HISTORICAL ADDRESS 

Rev. Matthew H. Buckham, D.D., LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT 

MUSIC "Crossing the Bar" (Schnecker) 

ADDRESS Hon. William P. Dillingham 

UNITED STATES SENATOR 

ADDRESS Col. William M. Hatch 

MUSIC Traum (Humperdinck) 

ADDRESS Col. Curtis S. Emery 

ADDRESS Hon. Horace W. Bailey 

BENEDICTION 



ADDRESSES 



ADDRESS OF 
GOVERNOR GEORGE H. PROUTY 

TO DAY is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
the late Senator Justin S. Morrill, who for almost forty- 
four years represented the people of this State in the Congress 
of the United States. His services were of such a character as to 
give to Vermont an influence in the councils of the Nation far 
beyond anything commensurate with her size and population. 

He was a product of Vermont soil — rising from the humble 
position of a farmer's son with only ordinary common school 
advantages to be one of the greatest leaders in the councils of 
the Nation. His success was not the result of accident of 
birth but was brought about by persistent, hard work, rugged 
honesty, and great common sense. 

To realize the caliber of the man it is only necessary for 
us to remember that Mr. Morrill was absolutely without 
legislative experience when he became the unanimous choice 
of his party to be their representative in Congress. Within 
ten years he was advanced through his various committee 
appointments to be chairman of the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and the leader of the House. 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



We are prone to think of him as our Senator and to dwell 
on his great achievements as chairman of the Finance Com- 
mittee of that body, but we ought also to remember that in 
the House he was a member of the Committee on Agriculture 
and was the father of the legislation granting aid to agricul- 
tural schools and colleges, thus providing for a great system 
of education for those engaged in the pursuit of farming — that 
industry on which is based our great national prosperity. 
While his achievements on the Finance Committee of the 
Senate gave him a place in history from which he can never 
be displaced, we must not forget that during all the time he 
was perfecting that great financial policy of our government, 
of which all subsequent policies have been only modifications, 
that he retained his love for the beautiful and worked inces- 
santly for those ideals at once so beneficial and artistic, which 
culminated in the erection of that most beautiful of all build- 
ings, the Congressional Library. From whatever point we view 
him we find a great man — not the greatness produced by some 
mighty oratorical effort but the result of untiring zeal for the 
building up of our country which he loved so truly. During 
the great war Vermont was proud of the record of her soldiers. 
They stood at the front and kept the lines closed up. None 
were braver, none performed greater deeds of valor on the 
field of battle ; but great as these men were, and heroic as were 
their deeds, their patriotism would have been of no avail had 

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ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR GEORGE H. PROUTY 

there not been in the halls of our National Congress men with 
the ability and clearness of vision to enact legislation that 
should secure to us for all time the results of the successful 
prosecution of the war; and among those who succeeded in per- 
forming this great task towered the man whose memory we 
are honoring today. His was the master mind that formu- 
lated the great scheme for raising revenue, which became the 
wonder and admiration of the world. 

This man stood in the front rank of those who were fight- 
ing the battle for good laws and fought as fiercely for what 
was right as did our soldiers. 

The best testimony as to the real worth of a man is that 
given by those who have been closely associated with him in 
the active duties of his life. Fortunately we shall today have 
such expressions from those who for many years were his close 
personal associates and who are still active in the affairs of the 
Nation. But there were those who have passed on and can- 
not give expression to their love and esteem, but they have 
spoken it in the past and it is recorded. 

Let me at this time read to you a few words of appreciation 
spoken by the late Senator Hoar, which tell so much better 
than I possibly can of his great worth and of the work he did. 

"It would be impossible, even by a most careful study of 
the history of the country for the last forty years, to determine 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



with exactness what was due to Mr. Morrill's personal influ- 
ence. Many of the great policies to which we owe the suc- 
cessful result of the Civil War — the abolition of slavery; the 
restoration of peace; the new and enlarged definition of citi- 
zenship; the restoration of order; the establishment of public 
credit; the homestead system; the foundation and admission 
of new states; the exaction of apology and reparation from 
Great Britain ; the establishment of the doctrine of expatria- 
tion; the achievement of our manufacturing independence; 
the taking by the United States of its place as the foremost 
nation in the world in manufacture and in wealth, as it was 
already foremost in agriculture; the creation of our vast 
domestic commerce; the extension of our railroad system 
from one ocean to the other — were carried into effect by nar- 
row majorities and would have failed but for the wisest coun- 
sel. When all these matters were before Congress, there 
may have been men more brilliant or more powerful in debate, 
but I cannot think of any wiser in counsel than Mr. Morrill. 
Many of them must have been lost but for his powerful sup- 
port. Many owed to him the shape they finally took." 

Words such as these delivered by this great man, who was 
for so many years associated with Mr. Morrill, are the finest 
tribute that can be paid to him whom we love. 

We do well to gather here to pay tribute to his memory, 
for by so doing we only repay in small degree the great debt 
of gratitude we owe him. 



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ADDRESS OF 
PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

IT is now a little more than eleven years since here, in this 
capital city of Vermont, amid an imposing array of the rep- 
resentatives of the State and of the Nation, the body of Senator 
Morrill, with that of his wife, was consigned to the tomb, to 
be shortly after conveyed to their last resting-place in the 
cemetery of his native village. Few public men of our Nation 
have been honored with a more general and more heartfelt 
tribute of respect and affection than that which was then 
awarded to Senator Morrill by his fellow-citizens of Vermont, 
by his colleagues at Washington, and by the people through- 
out the United States. Since that time many of those who 
gave public expression to a people's admiration and sorrow 
have passed away — among them the Senator's junior colleague, 
Redfield Proctor, who in his place in the Senate said, "there 
is sorrow at every hearthstone in the State he loved so well;" 
his temporary successor, Senator Ross, who spoke of him as 
"a great-hearted, well-balanced, kind, intelligent, self-reliant, 
patriotic, honest man;" Senator Vest, between whom and 
Senator Morrill a warm personal friendship had existed for 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



twenty years undisturbed by political differences, and who 
said of him, "he was one of the most loyal and lovable men 
I have ever known," "one who sleeps, and sleeps well, in the 
granite hills of his native State, and whose memory will be 
loved and cherished until those mountains are melted with 
fervent heat;" and, finally, that noblest Roman of them all, 
that "old man eloquent" of the Senate, George Frisbie Hoar, 
who said, "we offer this man as an example of an American 
senator and American citizen than which, so far, we have 
none better." Surely, though "honor's voice" cannot "provoke 
the silent dust," if honest and heartfelt and well-deserved praise 
can soothe and gratify and animate the living, surely the sur- 
viving friends and compatriots of Senator Morrill can desire 
for him no higher eulogium than these words which found 
then, and find today, enthusiastic response in the hearts of all 
true Vermonters. 

Such were the tributes which love and grief paid while 
sorrow for his loss was fresh, while sympathy prompted a 
kindly and generous estimate of one whose hand-grasp in ours 
was still warm. With the detachment afforded by a decade 
of years, with the opportunity and the obligation of the calm 
view which historic justice requires, what is our estimate of 
Senator Morrill today? One thing we can say with no hesi- 
tation and no fear of challenge, that, as Macbeth said of the 
gracious Duncan, as Senator Vest said of Mr. Morrill, "he 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 



sleeps well," "nothing can touch him further." No scandal, 
no late-discovered wrong-doing has emerged to taint his 
memory in all these years — none can now emerge. His name 
was of spotless white all through the long years of his active 
life; his memory will be spotless hereafter. We are told to 
call no man happy till his death. Senator Morrill has safely 
passed the portal which shuts out all the chances and dangers 
of a reversal of judgment. His fame is "gathered and safe." 
Addressing ourselves now to the sober and reasoned judg- 
ment which we of this later day are called on to pronounce, 
sitting as a tribunal whose impartial verdict anticipates the 
decisions of history, what place shall we assign to Mr. Morrill 
in the roll of worthies on which the fair fame of our State and 
Nation depends? It is sometimes said that democracies pro- 
duce but few great men and that they do not love the few 
they do produce. It might be said in reply that democracies 
do not need the same kind of great men that other forms of 
society need— men who tower above the rest of the people, 
and organize and mobilize the mass — because the high aver- 
age of ability and merit which democracy fosters is a better 
guaranty of social well-being than the phenomenal excellence 
of a few outstanding men. But it is open to us to challenge 
the statement itself, and to maintain that democracies have 
always produced, and can always be depended upon to produce 
a certain kind of great men, and that when produced the 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



people admire and honor and love them. These men are not 
great after the pattern of the CaBsars, the Charlemagnes, the 
Louis XIVs, the Napoleons, the Bismarcks, nor even after the 
pattern of the Mirabeaus and the Cromwells; they are not 
men who dazzle and overawe the multitude, and trample 
down inferiors, and have to ask indulgence from history for 
great crimes in consideration of great merits and services. 
They are men after the pattern of William of Orange, and 
Washington, and John Bright, and Lincoln — men who have 
the common virtues of the people or the Nation carried to a 
high pitch of excellence, and by virtue of that eminence in 
degree, rather than of any distinction in kind, are the natural 
and acknowledged and trusted and loved leaders of the people 
in ways which in their deepest hearts the people themselves 
approve and desire. 

Of this class was Senator Morrill. I hesitate even in this 
class to speak of him as a great man. He was not a man who 
claimed homage in his lifetime. It was never natural to apply to 
him terms of eulogy. He neither used nor invited superlative 
or grandiose language. And yet what other American of our 
times has had a day set apart to his memory in almost every 
state and territory in the Union? It was said of Washington 
that he instituted in the minds of mankind a new order of 
greatness. May we not say of Mr. Morrill that in a humbler 
way he set up before our democratic people a pattern of public 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

virtue and public service which, if not a new one, is brought 
home to our people, and especially to our young men, with 
unusual and most impressive force in his person and career. 
The incidents of Mr. Morrill's early life have been so often 
told in the public notices of him that we need not dwell much 
on them. He had the inestimable advantage of being born 
in the country, which a great writer says is one of the three 
greatest possible blessings in life. He was the son, the grand- 
son, and the brother of blacksmiths, any one of whom, I 
doubt not, could have sat for Longfellow's honest blacksmith. 
It offends the self-importance of us teachers that he could 
have gotten so much education with so little of our schooling. 
The secret of it is, I suppose, that a few first-class books — 
they must be few as well as first-class — well read and thought 
over, eager and cogent discussions of great public events, such 
discussions as Scotchmen and New Englanders are capable 
of, these superadded to the inherited intellectuality and ac- 
quisitiveness of a good Yankee brain, will account for any 
degree of education short of one broadly liberal. How strange 
it sounds in these times that after a few years of good trade 
in a country store a man still young should decide that he had 
made money enough, and resolve to retire upon a farm and 
enjoy his otium cum dignitatel But this man, apparently 
without ambition, certainly without ambition in the Roman 
sense, this man who would not go about begging for votes to 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



put him in office, was the man whom the people wanted in 
office — would that all our people wanted such a man! And 
accordingly they sent him to the National Congress and kept 
him there longer than any other member of Congress had 
been kept in office during the whole existence of our Govern- 
ment. Why did our little State of Vermont have the great 
good fortune to be represented by such a man, while many 
large and powerful States have been represented by inferior 
men? Was it because of the lack of able and good men in 
these States? Certainly not. There is no dearth of good men 
in all the States. If Mr. Morrill had been a resident of some 
other State would he have been sent to the Senate from that 
State? It is at least extremely doubtful. I should be sorry 
to think that all States are represented by their typical men, 
but in Mr. Morrill, Vermont was so represented. Vermont 
and Mr. Morrill were exactly, ideally fitted to each other. 
Of no other State would he have been so fit a representative. 
And I do not say that Mr. Morrill represented all of Vermont. 
We do not forget Vermonters of other types, as true Vermont- 
ers, equally deserving of our pride and praise, whose names 
I dare not speak for time would fail me to tell of them. Nor 
do I think that Mr. Morrill reproduced, would as fittingly 
represent Vermont in the time to come as he did in his time. 
Vermont has changed with all the rest of the world. The 
country life, village life, farm life, the country schools, the 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

country churches, the town meetings, the village squire, the 
village store and tavern and blacksmith's and cooper's shops, 
the old plain-living and high-thinking society as it was in the 
beginning and earlier half of Mr. Morrill's career — all this is 
very much changed and has almost ceased to be. Vermont 
will never have another Mr. Morrill, because the elements 
which produced him have passed away. All the more reason 
this why we should make the most of him, and fix him in our 
affections and memory as an everlasting possession, and why 
we call upon men of the other States to join us in appreciating 
and honoring him. 

The puzzling thing to account for, apparently, in Mr. 
Morrill's career, is the passing of the small storekeeper and 
the small farmer into a statesman of national breadth and 
cosmopolitan ideas. The underlying assumption is that a 
man who grows up in a parochial environment will have 
parochial ideas of all things, and there is much reason in the 
assumption. But the explanation of Mr. Morrill's case is not 
far to seek. He had in him the capacity of growth, and he 
grew up to his capacity. As we teachers well know, the great 
difference in youths is a difference in capacity of growth. As 
it is with seeds so it is with souls. Some seeds in the best 
soil come to little; others absorb all that soil and sun and rain 
can bestow, and grow amazingly. I have no doubt that even 
when Mr. Morrill joined in discussions in the country store, 

( >5 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



when he was a farmer among farmers, his neighbors recog- 
nized him as the broadest man among them. But when he 
went to Washington he became, and he remained to his last 
day, a laborious student of national affairs from a national 
point of view. He maintained his political headquarters at, 
and took his political bearings from, no longer Strafford, or 
the Congressional district of his State, or Vermont, or New 
England, or the North, but Washington for a center, with 
a radius reaching to the remotest corner of the Union. Doubt- 
less he loved as much as ever the Ompomponoosuc River, in 
which he had fished and bathed when a boy; but his thoughts 
and his dreams now ran with the Potomac and the Mississippi. 
Any American who has the capacity for greatness will become 
great-minded and great-hearted if he will let his being flow out 
with the lines of latitude and longitude, and with the length 
and breadth of the thoughts and ideas of his whole country; 
and this Mr. Morrill did, and this was the reason why, while 
others remained narrow and sectional and intolerant, he grew 
into statesmanlike breadth and magnanimity. 

The best illustration and confirmation of this view of Mr. 
Morrill we get in looking at the three great series of measures 
for which his public career is distinguished. The first is his 
tariff measure. That which most impresses one in reading 
through the debates in Committee of the Whole during the 
progress of the original Morrill Tariff Act is his masterful 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

grasp of details on the one hand, and on the other the large, 
impartial, catholic outlook over the whole field of industry 
and commerce. While others were mainly intent on getting 
a selfish or sectional indulgence for sugar or rice or cotton ties 
or collars and cuffs, he kept ever in mind the provision of the 
Constitution that taxes should be laid and collected in order 
to promote the general welfare. When we look back over 
this distance of time, and study the circumstances under 
which this vast system of protective legislation was first organ- 
ized ; when we consider how improbable it was that a measure 
involving so many conflicting and mutually jealous interests 
could have been so adjusted as to have any chance of success; 
how admirable appear the patient consideration of all views 
and claims; the calmness and poise of judgment, the con- 
ciliatory and persuasive wisdom which carried the measure 
through with so little final opposition. Contemporary ap- 
plause does not follow this kind of statesmanship. A legisla- 
tive measure consisting mainly of percentages does not furnish 
material for a sonorous peroration. But history, with its clear 
and solemn though late award of praise, forgets the brilliant 
maker of speeches, and treasures the memory of the man who 
by wise and patriotic fiscal measures encourages and fosters 
the industries, trade, and commerce of his whole country. 

Next consider the prominent part taken by Mr. Morrill 
in the erection of the great public buildings which adorn the 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



seat of Government. It is really a marvelous thing that Mr. 
Morrill, of all the men of his generation, should have been 
the most ardent and persistent advocate of splendid national 
architecture. How did he, more than any statesman of his 
time, arrive at that high and fine appreciation of the elements 
of national greatness which prompted him to say, as reported 
by Senator Vest, that no people could arrive at the first rank 
in civilization and refinement who were not devoted to archi- 
tecture and its majestic and beautiful forms of art? Where 
did this plain man from a little country village, who had not 
traveled extensively, who had had little opportunity for study- 
ing the great architectural monuments of the world, where 
did he get his conception of the significance and value of the 
grand and gorgeous and imposing in national architecture? 
Surely it should have been some denizen of a great city, or 
some statesman widely traveled and thoroughly versed in art ; 
it should have been Sumner, or Motley, or Everett, or Evarts, 
or one of the Adamses, who should have roused national senti- 
ment and taste to this height of artistic appreciation. I think 
the explanation of Mr. Morrill's enthusiasm on this subject 
is not far to seek, and again I find it in his large and noble 
patriotism. Mr. Morrill's own magnanimity, his idealization 
of his country as being essentially great and commanding and 
glorious, demanded that every embodiment and expression 
of that nationality should be dignified and impressive and 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

costly. And this not only because it is in accord with the 
fitness of things, but because government better fulfills its 
own purpose, commands respect and obedience, calls forth 
loyalty and pride and affection, when it appeals to both head 
and heart through symbols which bespeak its intrinsic author- 
ity and majesty and sanctity. The Library of the Congress 
of the United States, simply because it is the Library of the 
Congress of the United States, ought to be enshrined in the 
most superb library building in the world — and it is. The 
Supreme Court of the United States, the most august judicial 
body in the world, ought to hold its sittings in an edifice which 
declares to all the world the public sense of the solemnity and 
authority of the supreme law which that court adjudicates; 
and if Mr. Morrill's last words in the Senate are heeded, as 
they deserve to be, such an edifice the Supreme Court will ere 
long have. 

This brings us to the last and greatest of Mr. Morrill's 
public measures, the national endowment of higher education, 
the founding of — not "Agricultural Colleges," not such exclu- 
sively, but as he himself styled them in a bill he introduced 
December 15, 1873, "National Colleges for the advancement 
of general scientific and industrial education." It is pertinent 
to say in passing, in view of past and recent discussion 
on this point, that it was very far from Mr. Morrill's intent 
to make these institutions narrowly technical. He said at 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



one time, "These colleges were not established or endowed 
for the sole purpose of teaching agriculture. It was never 
intended to force the boys of farmers going into these institu- 
tions so to study that they should all come out farmers. It 
was merely intended to give them an opportunity to do so, 
and to do so with advantage if they saw fit. Not manual but 
intellectual instruction was the paramount object." In brief 
it was Mr. Morrill's great statesmanlike and patriotic and 
philosophic idea that the industrial classes, as he called them, 
those engaged in the two great and paramount industries of 
agriculture and the mechanic arts, should be encouraged to 
educate themselves in the best way for their callings as men 
in the so-called liberal professions had hitherto been in their 
way educated for their professions. He lays down this princi- 
ple and the practice which is to grow out of it in language 
which has occasioned divergence and controversy. It starts 
out apparently to establish a purely technical school of agri- 
culture and the mechanic arts. But that was too narrow a 
statement of the education Mr. Morrill had in mind ; so he 
inserted parenthetically "not excluding (therefore including) 
other scientific and classical studies." And yet, in order to 
keep the distinctive feature clear, the leading object shall be 
to teach agriculture and the mechanic arts? No, not to teach 
arts but branches of learning relating to these arts. The 
college was to be an institution of learning, in which the lead- 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 



ing object was to teach branches of learning — that is, sciences. 
Does this now satisfy Mr. Morrill? Far from it. The main 
thought and motive of the whole is yet to come out. What 
is the ruling principle which is to shape and control these in- 
stitutions? Is it to give a sort of apprenticeship to farmers 
and artisans in their callings — to be a trade school on the one 
hand or a school of abstract and visionary science on the 
other ? No, it is to give education — not mere apprenticeship, 
not mere learning — an education which shall be first liberal, 
then practical — the best feasible combination of the two — an 
education which shall be adapted to the needs of those who 
are entering upon not only farming and mechanical pursuits, 
but upon all the pursuits and professions. This is not the 
first time in which legislation, in the effort to secure at the 
same time precision and elasticity, achieves comprehension 
at the expense of some inconsistency, and leaves some 
room for the narrow and the broad constructionists to reveal 
the faith that is in them — as events have shown. The lan- 
guage may well be compared for expansive comprehensive- 
ness with those few but potent words which give validity to 
interstate commerce legislation. The measure when first 
presented encountered a variety of opposition which at this 
day is scarcely credible — from Southern statesmen on the 
ground that it was a direct violation of the rights of the States 
and an attempt to secure control of their most important 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



interests through an educational system; from others that it 
was "a visionary project," "an extraordinary engine of mis- 
chief;" most amusing of all, from the Senator from Minnesota 
who declared that "the success of the measure would bring a 
slow, lingering death to Minnesota;" and finally from Presi- 
dent Buchanan, who, after the bill had passed both Houses, 
vetoed it on the two-fold ground that the Government was 
too poor to make the proposed donation, and that the bill 
was unconstitutional. This was in 1859 — a year dark and 
ominous in more than the loss of this patriotic and potentially 
beneficent measure. 

But in 1862 — a year marked at the same time by intense 
absorption in military events, and a revived national feeling 
which looked hopefully into the future, Mr. Morrill again 
introduced his bill and secured its final passage, with the signa- 
ture of Mr. Lincoln. Under this bill, this "visionary project," 
this "engine of mischief," this "breeder of lingering death" to 
great agricultural States, and bills supplementary and auxiliary 
thereto, there have been established sixty-seven institutions 
of collegiate grade, having a permanent plant made up of 
Federal, State, and other appropriations and gifts valued at 
$112,000,000; an annual income of $18,000,000; an enrollment 
of 5,755 professors and instructors and 73,800 students. But 
more significant than these statistics, stupendous as they are, 
is the simple but momentous fact that in every State and Ter- 

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

ritory in the Union, to the humblest boy or girl — for co-educa- 
tion in these colleges is almost universal — is access possible, 
and as easy as it is safe to make it, to the liberal and practi- 
cal education which best fits him or her for the pursuit or pro- 
fession in life which each may have chosen. Now I affirm 
that this is a distinctively American conception of public educa- 
tion ; that in no other country in the world would it enter the 
head of a statesman to endow the higher education for such a 
purpose; that only an American of unusually large mind and 
generous heart could have conceived and elaborated and car- 
ried into act such a project; and that the far-seeing wisdom 
of the plan and the magnificent results which have already 
attended its execution constitute a title to the homage and 
gratitude of posterity which any statesman of any age or 
country might envy Mr. Morrill. Ages hence, whence the 
full potency of these institutions shall be realized and appre- 
ciated; when science and art shall cooperate in all our 
industries; when those who aspire to be masters, and not mere 
journeymen, in any trade or calling, shall seek and find 
mastership through a liberal education fitting each for his 
calling; when the three so-called learned professions shall be 
merged in the dozen or score of liberal professions; then there 
will be wise American statesmen who will say: "I would rather 
have been the author of the Morrill Act for the endowment 
of higher education than to have been the author of any other 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



of the great measures on the National statute books, except 
the very few great, heroic, epoch-making acts of the American 
Nation; and this was in itself, though humbler in its form 
and calmer in its operation, one of the great epoch-making 
acts of the American Nation." 

The most significant lesson of Mr. Morrill's life to one 
looking forward to any form of public service is that he is the 
truest representative of the people who represents the best 
elements of the people. On the truth of this proposition hang 
all the best hopes of popular government. This, more than 
all else, divides public men into statesmen and demagogues. 
The man who believes in this principle and acts on it is, in 
so far, a statesman. The man who doubts and yields to his 
doubts is a demagogue. When the people see their worst 
side embodied in a public man, and acted out on the public 
stage in the eyes of the world, they realize the bad thing that 
it is, and are ashamed of it, and repudiate it and him. "Why 
did you yield to our ignorance and delusion, and flatter us 
with the pretense that it was wisdom and virtue, when as an 
assumed leader you ought to have taught us better? Away 
with you, and give place to a more honest and courageous 
man !" But when they see in a high place where they have put 
him a man who represents their better selves, who is above them 
and yet not so far above them but that they can claim sympathy 
with him and have power to appreciate and approve him — 

( 24 ) 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT MATTHEW H. BUCKHAM 

a man of whom they can say "we are not profoundly wise, but 
this man represents us even when he is wiser than we are, be- 
cause he represents us at our best" — that is the man to whom 
the people love to show their favor by keeping him in his high 
place as long as he has power to do them service. The peo- 
ple can be fooled, but they repent of their folly and curse the 
man who fooled them. But the man who never fools them, 
never yields to them, tells them the truth whether they like it or 
not, insists that they are better and wiser men than they profess 
to be, appeals from the populace drunk or mad to the people 
sober and sane, that man is not only justified in his own mind 
and by the few wise ; he is in the long run the popular favor- 
ite, the man universally respected and beloved and continued 
in office as long as his faculties survive ; the wise and good 
man, of whom his constituency, his State, his Nation, are proud. 
I said a moment ago that I hesitated to acclaim Mr. Morrill 
as one of the Nation's great men. I did so partly because his 
modesty would have rebuked me for so praising him, and 
partly because the phrase itself is too cheap to be applied to 
such a man. But now, avoiding any language which he or 
anyone might regard as fulsome, estimating him at his real 
worth, calmly, judicially, and yet with the warmth of admira- 
tion and affection which friendship requires and justice ap- 
proves, shall we not, here and now, clasp hands with the Muse 
of History and say — here was a man of superb physical pres- 

( 25 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



ence, of commanding form and gracious manner, endowed 
with superior intellectual gifts, gifts of large discernment and 
keen penetration ; capable both of the wit which exposes weak- 
ness and the humor which conciliates opposition; a man of 
vision, a vision which passes over all provincial boundaries 
and peers into widest national spaces and interests; a man 
whose wisdom partakes of that calm assurance of right and 
victory which evokes and inspires confidence in other men's 
breasts; a man whose integrity, unselfishness, devotion, no 
man ever thought of questioning as no man would think of 
questioning the constancy of the polar star; — here is a man 
whom Vermont will ever more honor as one of her truest and 
finest and noblest products, and one whom she presents to 
the Nation and the world as in Senator Hoar's phrase: "an 
American senator and American citizen than which, so 
far, we have none better." 

Thus far of Mr. Morrill, the citizen, the public man, the 
statesman, the senator. But the picture would not be com- 
plete or true to the life, if we do not add in the simplest words 
which alone would be appropriate of Justin Smith Morrill, 
the man — that he was held in high esteem by his neighbors, 
that he was a lover in his home, that he was warm and genial 
and devoted in his friendships, that he was a gracious and 
courteous gentleman, and that he was, in his own humble 
and silent and reverent way, a Christian indeed. 

( 26 ) 



ADDRESS OF 
SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM* 

FT was fitting that President Buckham should be selected 
■*■ to deliver the historical address on this notable occasion. 
No other man now living in Vermont was honored by a friend- 
ship with Senator Morrill so long continued or so intimate. 
No other man could have honored the occasion as he has 
done. The address to which we have listened is not only 
chaste and eloquent in diction but so comprehensive in char- 
acter, so complete in all its parts, and so appreciative of the 
rare qualities of the man whose birth we celebrate and in 
whose achievements we glory, that those who follow can add 
nothing either to its excellence or its charm. 

I am here today in glad response to the invitation of our 
honored Chief Magistrate, not for the purpose of delivering 
an address, but to join my fellow citizens in this State-wide 
celebration of one of the red-letter days in Vermont's calen- 
dar, — a day which gave to the State a great son, and to the 
Nation a great legislator. 

As I have considered his remarkable career, the element in 

^Senator Dillingham spoke extemporaneously but substantially as here given. 

( 27 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



Senator Morrill's life which has challenged my interest more 
than any other is the fitness he showed for public life when he 
entered the National legislature. To one living in the present 
age his previous life as a country merchant in a small village 
seems to have been an isolated one. Only four states had 
been added to the Union when he was born. He was twenty 
years of age when Peter Cooper invented the steam locomotive 
which, in a trial trip, surprised the public by actually making 
better time than the horse-cars then in operation on the 
Baltimore and Ohio Railway. He was thirty years of age 
before Boston and New York were connected by a continuous 
line of rails, and it was only two years before he entered 
Congress that Boston and Chicago were similarly connected. 
If the means of locomotion were crude in those days it 
is also true that the communication of news was also slow. 
We have to remember that Mr. Morrill was thirty-four years 
of age before Morse succeeded in inducing Congress to make 
an appropriation of $50,000 with which to construct his 
experimental line of telegraph between the cities of Washing- 
ton and Baltimore, an extravagance on the part of Congress 
which caused more than one good man voting for it his seat 
in that body. And he was nearly forty years of age before 
the news of the world was brought to him by daily papers. 
Up to 1840 there was not a daily paper in the United States 
having a circulation of more than five thousand copies. Even 

( 28 ) 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 

James Watson Webb with all of his energy and by the 
employment of the pony express and sound schooners was 
unable to raise the circulation of the Courier above that 
number. Mr. Morrill, dwelling in a rural community, was 
dependent upon weekly papers in which the news was much 
condensed. Reports of proceedings in Washington were at 
least a week old when read, while news from Europe con- 
tained accounts of events of two months before. 

But the fact must not be overlooked that Mr. Morrill 
came of sound New England stock. His was a sound mind 
in a sound body; and he inherited a taste for reading, a 
capacity to think, an ability to form sound opinions and to 
reach strong conclusions. President Buckham's declaration 
that "he had in him the capacity for growth and that he grew 
up to his capacity," has in it the secret of his great career. 
True it is that his schooling was scanty, but however few his 
studies may have been in the common school and the academy 
in which he had one or two terms, accuracy was required in 
these and he was taught to think. This great asset he car- 
ried into his everyday business, into his social, religious and 
political life. He was a methodical seeker after knowledge, 
sounding every source of supply. I have it upon the author- 
ity of Miss Swan, a sister-in-law of Senator Morrill, who 
as a member of his family ever after his marriage, had excep- 
tional opportunities for observation, that during his early 

( 29 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



manhood and ever afterwards he maintained a private library 
where he spent all his evenings and such other time as he could 
afford, in reading works of English literature and special 
treatises on almost every subject, political and otherwise, 
which engaged his attention ; that it was the habit of his life 
to secure the latest works upon every current question which 
became prominent in his thought; that in his reading he took 
voluminous notes and not infrequently prepared papers upon 
topics suggested by his reading, thus acquiring the elegance 
and accuracy in expression for which he was noted. The 
nature of his business was such also as to interest him in all 
the movements of the times, political and industrial, and his 
system of reading such that he became thoroughly cognizant 
of the principles underlying every public question which 
challenged his attention. 

What an array of great National issues presented them- 
selves during the next twenty-five years for the consideration 
of thoughtful and patriotic men! Senator Morrill had 
reached the age of eighteen but had been three years in bus- 
iness when the tariff act of 1828 was adopted. He was 
twenty years of age when the great debates between Webster 
and Hayne occurred in the United States Senate, and his 
attention was thus directed to the great constitutional ques- 
tions involved. He was twenty-two when South Carolina 
startled the Nation by the adoption of an ordinance intended to 

(30 ) 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 

nullify an act of Congress. He was twenty-nine when the 
Nation passed through one of its greatest financial crises by 
reason of unsound banking methods and the consequent 
suspension of specie payments, and he thus had his attention 
directed to the great questions of finance of which he after- 
wards came to be the master-mind in legislation. He was 
thirty-four when the famous Walker Tariff was adopted and 
was thirty-six when England repealed her corn laws and 
entered upon her course toward the system of free trade 
which she afterwards adopted in its fullness. He was forty- 
four when President Pierce negotiated with Great Britain the 
reciprocity treaty, under the operation of which our exports 
to Canada rapidly dwindled and our imports increased by 
leaps and bounds. It was a reciprocity treaty confined almost 
wholly to natural products and had the effect to give the 
markets of New England to Canadian farmers. And I may 
add in passing that it was largely through his efforts twelve 
years later that this treaty was abrogated. 

Thus, during what may be called the preparatory period 
of his life, it fell to Mr. Morrill's lot to witness the develop- 
ment of the system of slavery until its black cloud over- 
shadowed our national life, and to become a thoughtful 
student of the great constitutional questions which involved the 
relation of the several states to the general government, and of 
all the great economic questions affecting the Nation's progress. 

( 3i ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



It was this education which enabled him to enter Congress 
at the age of forty-five, ripe in his knowledge of pending legis- 
lation, strong in his convictions and fitted to take earnest, 
early and intelligent part in the deliberations of the body to 
which he had been elected. It was but natural that he should 
vote against the tariff of 1857 which brought such financial 
distress to the country — a distress which enabled him to secure 
the passage of the tariff measure which bore his name and 
brought him fame, and to secure for it the approval of Presi- 
dent Buchanan two days prior to the inauguration of the 
great Lincoln as President of the United States. The value 
of this great achievement in legislation, and of the internal 
revenue law in the forming of which his hand had so much 
to do, can only be understood when we remember that it fur- 
nished the sinews of a war which covered an area as large as 
that of Continental Europe, excluding Russia; in which con- 
flict the men bearing arms outnumbered the entire population 
of the United States at the time the Constitution was adopted, 
and the army of whose dead was greater in number than 
the standing army of the United States at the present time. 

I do not know the facts, I have had no opportunity to 
make proper inquiry, but when I consider the legislation 
inaugurated and perfected by Senator Morrill providing for the 
endowment of agricultural and mechanical colleges in every 
State and Territory of the United States, I can but believe 

( 32 ) 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 

he was inspired to this action by the same system of reading 
of which I have spoken, remembering as I do that it was in 
1840 that the great German chemist, von Liebig, through 
his "Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture, etc.," first 
successfully aroused the attention of Europe to the study of 
agricultural chemistry, as a result of which study German 
agriculture has been brought from low conditions to those 
so perfect that the products of that nation at the present time 
are nearly sufficient to maintain its vast population of forty 
millions of souls. 

The effect of Mr. Morrill's thoughtful reading was also 
shown in his love for art, architecture and landscape garden- 
ing. This found expression in his charming home in Strafford, 
in its attractive grounds — both the fruit of his own concep- 
tion ; also in his efforts to induce Congress to devote the use 
of the old hall of the House of Representatives to statuary 
purposes, in which may now be found in marble and in bronze 
the forms of those who, either in war or in peace, have had 
glorious parts in the founding and development of the States of 
our Union. Also his efforts to bring to completion the great 
monument to Washington, the partly finished shaft of which 
had stood for so many years as an eyesore to all patriotic souls. 

It was this broad field of reading and his service as chair- 
man of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds 
that explains his interest in the development of our National 

( 33 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



Capital. It was the dream of Senator Morrill's life to 
make Washington the most beautiful capital city of the 
world, and he gave his untiring effort to the accomplishment 
of this end. His attention was first directed to the enlarge- 
ment and perfection of the grounds about the Capitol build- 
ing. No one without legislative experience can understand 
the task involved in such an undertaking. The Record 
shows that his efforts in this direction covered a period of 
more than eight years. In 1870 he secured an appropriation 
for this work and in 1872 still another for the same purpose. 
In 1874 he brought to his assistance the great landscape gar- 
dener, Frederick Law Olmstead, whose reports resulted in 
another appropriation for a topographical survey of the 
grounds. In 1876 he secured still another appropriation for 
the improvement of the grounds, and in 1877 an appropria- 
tion to extend their bounds. In 1878, sufficient grounds 
having been secured, the work of making them beautiful was 
carried steadily on. The magnificent terraces which sur- 
round three sides of the building are a monument to his taste 
and his efforts. Dissatisfied with the proportions of the Cap- 
itol building, he conceived the idea of constructing upon its 
north, west and south sides, marble terraces of proportions 
so grand as to give architectural strength and elegance to the 
building. In the accomplishment of this purpose nearly 
eight hundred thousand dollars were expended and, as a result, 

( 34 ) 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 

the west front of the Capitol, viewed from any standpoint, 
is, with its grand approaches, an ever continuing tribute to 
the cultivated taste and persistent efforts of Senator Morrill. 

But in the midst of this work and while Senator Morrill 
was dreaming of improvements to the natural park lying 
between the Capitol building and Washington monument, a 
mile away to the west, a bill was introduced in the Senate 
permitting the Pennsylvania Railroad to enter and pass 
through it to a station on Pennsylvania Avenue. As chair- 
man of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds he 
indignantly opposed this measure in the committee, but met 
with defeat — the only defeat, it is said, he ever suffered dur- 
ing his long years of service in that position. In the Senate 
he also gave all his energy to the defeat of this measure. 
The Record shows that during a long day session and again 
during a long night session he sought by every means in his 
power to defeat the invasion of these grounds for such a 
purpose, but failed. When in the end the measure was 
adopted it furnished, it is said, the only occasion in his entire 
public career when Senator Morrill's wrath brought with 
it a loss of self-control. Then it was that he suggested that 
the representatives of the Pennsylvania Railroad be given 
the privilege of the floor of the Senate and be authorized to 
dictate the policy of Congressional legislation affecting the 
interests of that corporation. It is an interesting fact that 

( 35 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



thirty-five years later it cost the Government of the United 
States one million five hundred thousand dollars to secure 
from the same company a relinquishment of its rights of 
way through this park and an agreement to enter the city 
from the north, and that I, as one of Senator Morrill's suc- 
cessors, and acting as a member of the Committee of Con- 
ference on the disagreeing vote of the two houses, consented 
to the payment of that vast sum. 

The dream of Senator Morrill will become a reality in 
the progress of time. The work left unfinished by him was 
taken up by the Committee on the District of Columbia under 
the direction of its then chairman, the lamented McMillan 
of Michigan. A commission consisting of eminent archi- 
tects like Burnham of Chicago and McKim of New York, 
of landscape gardeners of whom Olmstead was one, and of 
sculptors of whom St. Gaudens was one, were sent to Europe 
to study the park systems of the old world. Plans have been 
adopted and recommendations made which will result in the 
utilization of the entire park which so engaged the attention 
and protection of Senator Morrill. Standing upon the Cap- 
itol terraces and looking to the west one will soon see a stately 
parkway twelve hundred feet in width connecting the great 
dome of the Capitol with the great monument to Washington. 
The monument itself will be surrounded with massive ter- 
races and an attractive arrangement of Italian gardens. 

( 36 ) 



ADDRESS OF SENATOR WILLIAM P. DILLINGHAM 



From the monument to the Potomac similar improvements 
will be made and in Potomac Park, already beautiful but to 
become more so, will be erected a great memorial to the great 
Lincoln. Across the historic Potomac, from that point to 
Arlington, there will be constructed, to commemorate the 
reuniting of the North and South, the most magnificent bridge 
from an architectural standpoint that can be devised. Twice 
already the Senate has passed a bill appropriating seven mil- 
lions of dollars for this patriotic purpose. 

President Buckham has already referred in appreciative 
terms to the building in which the Library of Congress is 
enshrined, which building stands as a monument to Senator 
Morrill's educated taste and his desire to make Capitol 
Square one of the noted public squares of the world. In his 
mind's eye he saw another building of like massive and beau- 
tiful proportions designed for the use of the Department of 
Justice and the Supreme Court, standing to the north of and 
upon a line with the library building, the two, with their 
beautiful grounds, constituting the east side of this great 
square. To secure this his last words in the Senate were 
spoken, and though the project now sleeps it is not dead; 
in due time it will be revived and we shall see in graven stone 
that which he saw only in imagination. Already this square 
is flanked on the north and south by massive marble build- 
ings, classic in design, erected to the use of the Senate and 

( 37 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



House respectively, and only the Judiciary Building is lacking 
to make Capitol Square what Senator Morrill so earnestly de- 
sired, — one which shall command the admiration of the world. 

It would be a pleasure to refer to Senator Morrill's 
part in the establishment of the National Museum and in the 
erection of the State, War and Navy Building, one of the 
great Government buildings of the world, but time fails. In 
closing I can only give expression to the satisfaction I feel 
that the sentiment of the State has found expression in this 
manner; that the people have come together at this meeting 
not only in recognition of Senator Morrill's unblemished 
character as a man and his excellence as a citizen, but also 
for the purpose of bringing to the attention of the rising gen- 
eration those grand elements of character and those constant 
and methodical habits of study, thought and industry which, 
added to his great natural powers, enabled him to take effect- 
ive and leading part in shaping the Nation's destiny during 
the most important and critical era of its history. 

His life was one which the young men of this State may 
well take as a model, and in his public service they may find 
an inspiration to lives of highest achievement. 



(38) 



ADDRESS OF 
COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 

SITUATED at the crown of the beautiful hillside cemetery 
overlooking the little village of Strafford is the mausoleum 
in which rest the remains of Justin Smith Morrill; a house 
made with hands, and appropriately of native granite, but 
holding a memory which will be eternal. 

A national — even a world-wide character — but to the 
manor born. 

Statesman and economist, though reared in a country vil- 
lage almost wholly without political or commercial activity. 

Financier, although the training of youth was confined to 
the village store. 

Scholar, although self-taught. 

Art lover and artist, though his early inspiration could 
have been only from the environment of green fields, hills and 
valleys and from sunny skies, coupled with God-given ideals 
and an imaginative and sympathetic temperament. 

But to those whose privilege it was to know him best he 
was just a man — a gentle, courtly, considerate, lovable man 
— a gentleman. 

( 39 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



In a notable address, delivered a few years ago at New 
Haven by Dr. George W. Atherton, President of Pennsylvania 
State College, on Senator Morrill, he said: "He belonged to 
the 'plain people.' He was the son and grandson of a village 

blacksmith and was early inured to habits of 

industry and thrift." 

The substance of Dr. Atherton's appreciation in my opin- 
ion is fundamental. Add to it the one word "growth," with 
the resultant "prepared," and you have a well-rounded life 
of earnest, honest and successful labor. 

With the exception of two terms at Thetford Academy 
and one at Randolph Academy, Senator Morrill's early edu- 
cation was confined wholly to that offered by the district 
schools of his native town. His "schooling," so-called, was 
completed at the age of fourteen or thereabouts, and yet he 
was not one to be unduly complimented with the words "self 
made." He was not infrequently heard to say that it was the 
regret of his life that he could not have had a collegiate train- 
ing, as much for the associations as for the cultural benefits. 

Employment in the store of Judge Harris for a period of 
two years followed, and it is understood, at a yearly salary 
of approximately fifty dollars. 

He then went to Portland, Maine, and remained for four 
years engaged in similar service with a cousin, Jedediah Harris 
Morrill, acquiring as well a helpful knowledge of foreign 

( 40 ) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 



trade, and returning then to Strafford to accept a partner- 
ship with his former employer. This partnership continued 
for a period of fifteen years, when Mr. Morrill retired, pur- 
chased land adjacent to the village, built an attractive home, 
whose generous hospitality many of you have enjoyed, married 
and settled down to what he must have anticipated and hoped 
would be a well-earned retirement from the confining needs 
and duties of the village store, to take up the— to him— far 
more congenial occupation of farming — an occupation which, 
in the words of the modest biographical sketch of the Congres- 
sional Directory, he honored and dignified for forty-four years, 

Destiny found Justin Smith Morrill in the year 1854 and 
Mr. Morrill found opportunity. 

Practically unknown beyond the limits of Orange County, 
his neighbors nevertheless regarded him as of Congressional 
timber and, the then incumbent declining a renomination, 
suggested the name of their fellow townsman for considera- 
tion. His election followed, although with a margin uncom- 
fortably close, and a service to the State and Nation for nearly 
a half century succeeded, almost without opposition. 

Opportunity 
Master of human destinies am I! 

The man who wrote that and the succeeding lines some 
years ago for Truth was the subject of a conversation which 

( 4i ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



I was privileged to hear one evening in Washington between 
Senator Allison and Senator Morrill at the home of the latter. 
This man was a distinguished Senator from a great Western 
state — a party associate — and his attitude toward the tariff 
bill then before Congress was the subject of this conversation. 
When taken to task in committee room for apparent party dis- 
loyalty and for insincerity, the Senator's reply as quoted was: 
"I don't care a damn, so long as I secure my reelection." 

The evident shock to Senator Morrill, and his estimate of 
the effect of such a position, on the man himself as much as 
on the party organization and on the party faith, with his 
accurate analysis of conditions then existing, I recall as if only 
yesterday. The Senator loved his party and all that it had 
stood for, as he did his neighbors and the people of his native 
State whom he so thoroughly understood. But, although a 
partisan, he was not a party bigot, and many incidents and acts 
of his life can be cited in proof of this. His constant thought 
of the interests of his constituents and his frequent and suc- 
cessful efforts in their behalf in a personal way were known to 
all of you. With him, as with his distinguished colleague, the 
late Senator Proctor, it would have been impossible to have 
received a constituent's request for endorsement for appoint- 
ment in Washington, and, as did a former Senator from this 
State, make the formal reply that he "had made it an invariable 
rule not to endorse applicants for office, and that he could not 
see his way clear to make this instance an exception." 

( 42 ) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 



Senator Morrill took special delight in aiding young men, 
and that he did not confine his efforts in their behalf to those 
of the same political faith is shown from a letter which he 
wrote to his friend — a former Vermonter, as you know — Gen- 
eral Vilas, Postmaster-general during President Cleveland's 
first term, endorsing an applicant for appointment in the post- 
office department. The Senator wrote: 'This will introduce 

my young friend . Although a most pestiferous young 

Democrat, I will be responsible for all he steals." 

This same "young Democrat" was handing out his party 
ballots at the State election following, and in a spirit of jolly- 
ing handed a set to the Senator, who walked along a few 
steps, adjusted his glasses, looked at the ballots, then turned 
and said: "Son, I'd a good deal rather see you peddling 
these ballots than none at all." And then, with a twinkle 
in his eye, added: "I'm not sure, however, you'll think 
that a compliment." 

That Senator Morrill remained a student of the policy of 
protection with unabated interest, although with qualifying 
judgment, is shown by the following: 

This same young Democrat recalls carrying the official 
returns to Senator Morrill sitting in his library on the evening 
following the election of President Cleveland for a second 
term. When asked to what he attributed the remarkable 
reversal, early apparent, the Senator thought a moment and 

( 43 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



said: "It may be that the principle of protection has been 
carried just a bit too far." 

And four years later this young man, with many others of 
the State, found some of the chief tenets of old line Democracy 
only among the fundamental principles of Republicanism. 
On election morning he called on Senator Morrill and an- 
nounced his intention to support the Republican nominees, 
and the reply was characteristic of the man: "I won't say 
that I am glad, but rather that I hope you'll never regret 
having done so." 

Need I suggest the probability of an influence of many 
years, unintentionally exerted and unconsciously received. 

That the Senator's breadth of vision, resulting from ex- 
haustive study and an absolute sincerity of purpose, coupled 
with a desire to be right fundamentally and to be fair to party 
opponents as well as party associates, accounts in large 
measure for the influence which he exerted, for his close 
personal friendships regardless of party affiliation, for his 
almost unprecedented success in securing wise legislative 
enactments with a minimum of effort and friction, is a matter 
of absolute certainty. 

To give an appreciative recognition of this by way of illus- 
tration you will pardon a personal reminiscence. It was my 
privilege to call on President Cleveland in May, 1886, with 
the sister of Mrs. Morrill, Miss Swan, whose intimate 

( 44 ) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 

association with the Senator's family has remained to this day. 
We were conducted to his office and while there the President 
said to Miss Swan, "I want you to come to my window," 
and with a sweep of his hand indicating the reclaimed Potomac 
flats, said: "You know we owe all this to Senator Morrill." 

It is not difficult, therefore, to estimate or to understand 
the Senator's well-known influence upon Mr. Cleveland's 
administration, and one can admit that his advice was as pat- 
riotically sought as it was generously and patriotically given. 

A genuinely modest man and a lover of real humor, not 
of low or doubtful comedy but of clean and wholesome wit; 
a passionate lover of the world's best literature and a con- 
stant student of it. His own " Self-consciousness of Noted 
Persons" — a most excellent and interesting compilation, well- 
conceived and modestly but thoughtfully distributed — indi- 
cates this forcefully. To see Senator Morrill in his library 
at Strafford or in Washington, or to sit with him there, was to 
feel a benediction. 

The lavish hospitality of the widely enjoyed birthday 
parties at Washington will be remembered for many years. 
The diversified interests of his guests indicated the breadth 
of his acquaintance. Here were presidents, diplomats, states- 
men, generals, authors, musicians — celebrities of every pro- 
fession. A veritable salon ! It came to be one of the most 
enjoyed social functions of the Capital. 

( 45 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



In an address before the Vermont Historical Society de- 
livered here in Representatives' Hall on October 25, 1894, 
on the presentation of the Wood portrait, the Senator showed 
both modesty and humor. He said: "Unincumbered, forty 
years ago, by any prior record of office holding, except that 
of tithing-man with which my excellent townsmen were prone 
to honor their fellow citizens when married late in life, it 
was necessary at the start of my official life to 'screw my 
courage to the sticking place,' even to meditate going at a 
bound into the Halls of Congress." 
And again: 

"I must not deny that Vermont has made my political 
life an exceptionally happy one, and I shall only trust that the 
honorable position so long occupied by me, when surrendered, 
as it soon must be, will be found by my beloved State with its 
dignity, prestige and honor unimpaired and undiminished." 

"Home, home, sweet, sweet home!" 

"I have never yet heard of the Vermonter who was ashamed 
of his birthplace!" So said Senator Morrill to his fellow 
townsmen assembled in town-meeting on September 22, 
1883, for the purpose of voting on the Senator's gift of a town 
library. 

Known to and knowing every man, woman and child in 
town, he was not only respected and beloved throughout the 
community, but, when at home, was frequently seen on the 

(46) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 

hillside or on the village street enjoying a walk or calling on 
his neighbors, taking rides — invariably behind a first-class 
span, and not infrequently sitting at the store, the scene and 
source of his early training. He was a generous public bene- 
factor and catholic in his gifts, remembering equally the three 
religious denominations of his town, as well as his own in 
Washington. 

Senator Morrill was not so much a man to sit on the store 
steps with his neighbors and whittle, as he was to have a gen- 
uine appreciation of the real worth of some of those who did 
whittle ; an unfailing consideration for them and without pat- 
ronage; a profound respect for evidence of sound judgment 
born of careful, if not wide, reading, frequently yielding an 
opinion and advice for which he came to have a deep-seated 
respect. 

He loved the little branch of the Ompompanoosuc wind- 
ing through the valley, whose "raging torrent of the spring 
of the year," the stage-driver, Frank Blaisdell, and Speaker 
Colfax made famous. And, as you will recall, the good- 
natured chaffing which he received from his friends following 
the Speaker's return to Washington resulted in an amendment 
to the current River and Harbor Bill providing for an expendi- 
ture of $50,000 for deepening the channel of the Ompom- 
panoosuc. The Senator's amendment was worthy of Proctor 
Knott's harbor bill speech on Duluth. 

(47 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



In closing I ask you to enjoy with me a few brief quota- 
tions from the Senator's town library speech referred to above, 
for you will find therein the man. 

The Senator said : "These remarks would not have been 
made — as I recognize the propriety when a gift has been made 
that the giver shall hold his tongue about it — but for a rumor 
that the town would be urged not to accept of the building, 
on the idea that it might increase taxation ; the rumor, how- 
ever, proved to be unfounded. " 

Senator Morrill had lived to see the population of the town 
decrease approximately fifty per cent. He had noticed the 
changing conditions with genuine solicitude; the abandon- 
ment of hill farms; the disappearance through the use of 
machinery of such home industries as knitting and apple- 
drying; the greatly decreased production of wool, poultry and 
eggs and perhaps of maple sugar, and his concern for these 
and other changes is that today of those whose love for this 
and other rural communities is greatest. 

I quote again: 
"It would be strange if I did not take a deep interest in 
the town of Strafford. I was born here. Here to me even 
the stars, the planets and the moon seem to shine more brightly 
than elsewhere, and here has been my home until that age 
has been reached when I cannot fail to realize how soon I 
must join the great company of those who were and are not. 

(48 ) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL WILLIAM M. HATCH 



Whatever may be the number of our living townsmen, that 
of those who have gone to their final rest is much greater." 
Again : 

"The work of our ancestors is finished but our town will 
live forever, and may not something more from us be hope- 
fully expected ?" 

"When but a boy-clerk in a store of this village I started 
in 1827 a subscription for a town library with shares at two 
dollars each; there were, I think, about fifty subscribers. The 
capital was, however, too limited to flourish for any long 
period, and finally the books went out, like the doves from 
the ark of Noah, never to return." 

"My early life was passed here in active business ; the 
latter half of it in public service, possibly too long; of that 
the public will judge, but, though I differ with some of my 
fellow citizens in political opinions, I should regret to believe 
that I had a personal enemy in town, and certainly of no one 
am I the enemy. This act today is prompted, not for the pur- 
pose of obtaining the slightest benefit to me or mine, nor for 
the slightest notoriety. It is too insignificant for all that when 
compared with the magnificent gifts elsewhere of those blessed 
with much larger fortunes, and comes too late in life to sub- 
serve any selfish purposes. It is freely bestowed because I 
sincerely believe a permanent library, admitting the possi- 
bility of some steady normal growth, will promote as no other 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



equal expenditure can promote, the highest interests of the 
inhabitants of the town, uplifting their intelligence, their 
morals and their thrift, utilizing many hours of home life and 
making each one more and more to feel and to say that ' the 
lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places.' " 



( 50 ) 



ADDRESS OF 
COLONEL CURTIS S. EMERY 

A SPECIAL regret I have at this time is that some resident 
•*• *- of Orange County, who was an intimate friend of the 
distinguished man whose memory is today being honored, is not 
here to speak of him in a more fitting manner than is possible 
for me; that the voice of Judge Hebard, Governor Farnham 
or Lyman G. Hinckley cannot be heard in such words as 
they might have spoken of this splendid son of their county. 
But they, and in fact most of those who knew Justin S. Morrill, 
as friend only knows friend and neighbor knows neighbor, 
have either preceded or followed him to the great beyond. 

Although belonging to another generation it was my for- 
tune to live for many years within a few miles of his home, 
in a town adjoining his, to have met him frequently, and to 
have visited him in his home. These occasions I reckon 
among the choicest of memories, for I believe to have known 
this man was to have known perhaps the greatest man that 
this County or the State has ever produced, and I use this 
term with due regard to its full import, realizing what such 
an assertion implies. The world has never lacked, and prob- 

(51 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



ably never will lack great specialists, but he was more than 
that. He possessed that remarkable quality of mind which 
enabled him to become the master of any subject which con- 
fronted him; a great statesman, leaving his imprint during 
his nearly a half century of service in our National legislature 
upon perhaps more important legislation than any other man 
during the same time; always doing the work of a construc- 
tionist rather than a destructionist — the real test of statesman- 
ship. While not a lawyer yet he knew the fundamentals of 
the law; he was no stranger to the science of medicine; he 
accomplished more in his time for the cause of education in 
this land than had been done before; set a new and higher 
standard in architecture than we had ever reached; he 
knew the best in literature and art. He modestly yet fear- 
lessly approached any task, always with results, be it the con- 
struction of the great tariff act of 1861 or the designing of the 
beautiful home where he lived for so many years in Strafford. 
For this last work he required no architect or skilled decor- 
ator, his original and creative mind was equal to this as in 
everything he attempted. I well recall his once telling me of 
the rule he applied in placing the trees in the spacious grounds 
surrounding it. A measure of potatoes was thrown from the 
top of the house and wherever one was found a planting was 
made, resulting in a most effective arrangement. He, how- 
ever, claimed no originality for the plan, giving credit to a 
certain English nobleman. 

( 52 ) 



ADDRESS OF COLONEL CURTIS S. EMERY 

I will make no attempt at anything like a just and com- 
plete estimate of Senator Morrill, or to recount his life work ; 
that service has been assigned to one far better fitted for 
such a delicate task. I am here rather to rejoice with others 
from his native county that we claimed a little more of 
his daily life, though no more of its great results, than the rest 
of the State. We like to recall the fact that such a man was 
born, educated and spent his days and was borne to his last 
resting place in our midst. Such a life must of necessity 
leave its impress in many ways upon a community in which it 
was lived, and it is impossible to estimate its value. Whole- 
some and elevating, it is bound to stir every young man to bet- 
ter thoughts and aims. The height to which he arose in public 
esteem served to arouse to greater effort the youth of his 
time. This is shown from the fact that for many years dur- 
ing his lifetime his town sent more of its young men to college 
than any other town of its size, I think, in the State. 

Senator Morrill had a most remarkable personality. He 
was an ideal type of what is often referred to as a gentleman 
of the old school. Tall, dignified, and courtly in his bearing, 
faultless in dress, always friendly but with just enough reserve 
to hold his best and closest friends in check; they never 
thought of referring to him or addressing him by his given 
name, even in his younger days. Quite likely the times had 
something to do with this, but it is impossible to conceive of 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



him as any other than Mr. Morrill or Senator Morrill. One 
of the most approachable of men, a charming conversationalist, 
yet one with whom no one would ever think of taking liberties; 
always self-possessed, rather deliberate in speech, never mak- 
ing any attempt at oratory. Yet his public utterances were 
models and always claimed attention. His splendid face and 
noble figure were alone enough to carry conviction. His 
striking resemblance to Charles Sumner was often remarked 
upon in his later years. 

It is well that the life of such a man should be reviewed 
from time to time, and it is especially pleasing to the people 
of his native county that such action should be looked upon 
with favor at this time, for they loved him, not for the distinc- 
tion he had won, or because he was revered and loved by the 
great men of his day, but because they knew him as one of 
their own, their friend, their counsellor, and because they 
knew that his long career of usefulness was built upon a 
character as firm and enduring as the hills that surround his 
birthplace, his whole life as pure as the lilies which always in 
summer covered the little pond above his dwelling. 



( 54) 



ADDRESS OF 
HONORABLE HORACE W. BAILEY 

"MR. MORRILL — THE MAN" 

P\RYDEN says "that the best evidence of character is a 
"■— * man's whole life." 

When celebrating an event, whether it be national or 
individual, one is apt to select and dwell upon scenes and 
phases appealing most strongly to his personal view and tem- 
peramental taste. 

Having passed from this life out into God's great uni- 
verse, Justin Smith Morrill is now a part of our history, to be 
turned leaf by leaf, to be scrutinized, weighed, and to be 
measured by such standards as human wisdom may devise. 

To the world Justin S. Morrill is, and will be known as, 
the veteran legislator, the constructive lawmaker, whose wis- 
dom is imperishably written into our Federal statutes, where 
it will stand like a towering monument as long as government 
shall last. 

It would take volumes to contain a record of all that he 
accomplished for the uplift of a nation, and the construction 

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JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



and strengthening of her bulwarks, during the years of a long, 
vigorous and diligent life. 

I leave to others the narration of events and items which 
make up the record of Mr. Morrill's public career. To me 
the life of Mr. Morrill, whose achievements have now passed 
into history, becomes a star of the first magnitude, because 
he was my ideal of a manly man. 

He was void of an experience, yea practice, prevalent 
among some great men of buying his seat in high places for 
a cash consideration, or by the political intrigue of promises 
to be fulfilled — or oftener ignored. 

Nothing short of a most manly man could have rounded 
out almost a half century of life in an elective office without 
personal effort, or even anxiety. Such a man was Mr. Morrill, 
and such was the record of his Congressional life. He was 
not a member of any political stock exchange. 

In the great arena of public life he was the peer among 
noblemen, yet entirely void of the glitter and ostentation 
which follows in the wake of exalted position, or precedes the 
royal march with blare of drum and fife ; naught but ideal man- 
hood, raised to the superlative degree, can withstand such a 
pressure of the conventionalities. 

To have come out of such a long public life unblemished 
by a vast multitude of active evil forces is not evidence of 
greatness as a lawmaker, but rather as greatness of the man. 

( 56) 



ADDRESS OF HONORABLE HORACE W . BAILEY 

Men who are the product of the highways and byways, 
having reached the zenith of renown unaided by the advantages 
of an early liberal education and the functions of polite soci- 
ety, sometimes forget, but never such a lapse with Mr. Morrill. 
The unpolished boy from Orange County, fragrant with the 
balsam and pine of its wooded hills, or laden with the dust of 
its fertile valleys, was as kindly received and as courteously 
entertained in the lobbies and committee rooms of the United 
States Senate as though he was to the manor born. 

There was in Mr. Morrill a quality of heart which shone 
out through his countenance, touched every fiber of his phy- 
sique, and made one feel the presence of a real, true man. 

Men sometimes when they have acquired fame and for- 
tune, turn their backs on the scenes of childhood, on early 
trials, struggles and friendships. Not so with Mr. Morrill; 
the addition of years, the increase of important responsibil- 
ities, his place in the circle of a great Nation's great men, in 
the midst of a world's greatest century, did not haze his vision 
of the Morrill home among the Strafford hills, nor weaken the 
friendships for the homefolk of his early Vermont days. How 
appropriate that after "life's fitful dream" his mortal remains 
should repose in the midst of the scenes he loved so well. 

He seemed to lack the vindictive qualities which make 
some great men small and dangerous and hated; bitter sar- 
casm, withering irony and invective were not instruments with 

( 57 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



which Mr. Morrill won forensic battles and wrote laws into 
our statute books. But rather, through his being ran currents 
of kindness and benevolence strongly diked by walls of old- 
fashioned New England common sense and inherent honesty. 

Nevertheless, through his make-up there coursed a vein of 
deep, rich and tender humor, which often ran on into mild 
but forceful ridicule, which when wielded by his own skillful 
hand became a potent weapon of offense and defense. 

A careful reading of Mr. Morrill's speeches and writings 
confirms my belief that an entire chapter might be written on 
this phase of his character. He not infrequently made him- 
self the butt of his own humor. 

Then, measured by the Drydenic standard, Mr. Morrill's 
whole life is the best evidence of his character, because it is 
an inspiration to better thought, to better living, to the higher 
ideals in human character, and a splendid example of what 
diligence and an honest purpose in life will accomplish. 

To say of any man that he was the kind of a man to in- 
spire boundless confidence in mankind is a royal eulogy; such 
a man was Justin Smith Morrill, late Senator of the United 
States from Vermont. 



( 58 ) 



TRIBUTES 



FROM THE 
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Washington, D. C, April 10, 1910 

My Dear Governor Prouty: 

I greatly regret that I cannot be present to celebrate with 

you and Vermont the one hundredth anniversary of the birth 

of Senator Morrill. Senator Morrill and my father were very 

warm friends, and it was my good fortune to know him and 

by personal contact to feel his great qualities. He was a 

model for all those who serve their country to follow, and he 

typified in the highest degree the sterling virtues that we all 

accord to those who were born and brought up in the Green 

Mountain State. 

Very sincerely yours 

William H. Taft 

Hon. George H. Prouty 

Governor of Vermont 

Montpelier, Vermont 



( 61 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



FROM REAR-ADMIRAL CHARLES E. CLARK 

Washington, D. C, April 12, 1 9 10 

My Dear Governor: 

Being indebted to Senator Morrill for my commission in 
the Navy I ask that this be received as a slight but grateful 
expression of feeling in accord with those who unite to honor 
him on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. 

Charles E. Clark 
Hon. George H. Prouty 

Montpelier, Vermont 



FROM SENATOR SHELBY M. CULLOM 

Washington, D. C, March 10, 19 10 

My Dear Senator: 

Your note of the 9th instant, informing me that on the 
14th of April next occurs the one hundredth anniversary of 
the birth of the late Senator Morrill and that the people of 
Vermont propose to celebrate the day by holding a public 
memorial service at the capital of the State, has been received. 

I first met Senator Morrill in 1865 when I entered the 
Thirty-ninth Congress. He was then chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee and was one of the leaders of the 

( 62 ) 



TRIBUTES 



House. I became more thoroughly acquainted with him 
after entering the Senate in 1883. I do not now recall any 
man with whom I served here for whom I had a greater 
affection and whom I more fully appreciated as a statesman 
and as a friend. During his long term in Congress, longer 
than any other man in our history — forty-three years and nine 
months — I do not believe Senator Morrill ever made a single 
enemy. He was universally admired and respected by all. 

He was a man of extraordinary ability and exercised a 
dominating influence on legislation from the time of the 
passage of the Morrill Tariff Act, one of the measures under 
which it became possible to carry to a successful conclusion 
the great Civil War, until the time of his death. The history of 
his life forms a complete legislative history of the United States 
for forty-three years. He was contemporary with Sumner, 
Blaine, Conklin, Morton, Trumbull, Logan and Thurman, 
but he outlived them all, and years after these great statesmen 
had passed away, he remained an active, influential Senator. 

Senator Morrill was a safe, reliable and conscientious 
adviser, a man of sound judgment, with positive convictions, 
not yielding readily to the opinions of others. He was not 
a politician in the ordinary acceptance of the term. He 
was fortunate, however, in having a constituency who appre- 
ciated his high worth. I remember years ago visiting your 
State, and while there meeting prominent Republicans. The 

( 63 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



Legislature to convene that winter was to elect a successor to 
Senator Morrill. I inquired who they intended to elect, and 
the universal reply was that they would elect Senator Morrill 
if he was living and that they would keep him in the Senate 
as long as he lived ; this your State honored itself by doing. 

We were neighbors here in Washington, and saw a good 
deal of each other, and it so happened that I was at his house 
but a few minutes after he passed away. 

I am sincerely gratified that the good people of Vermont 
have resolved to honor his memory by holding services at your 
capital on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. 

Yours truly 

Shelby M. Cullom 
Hon. Wm. P. Dillingham 

United States Senate 



FROM SENATOR JACOB H. GALLINGER 

Washington, D. C, March 12, 191 o 

My Dear Senator Dillingham: 

It was my good fortune to enter the Senate when Justin 
S. Morrill was in full possession of his mental vigor and active 
in the affairs of that body. He was then its senior member, 
and I shall never forget his kindly manner towards me and 
others who were new to its rules and traditions. With a 

(64) 



TRIBUTES 



practical knowledge of Federal legislation covering forty-three 
years in the House and Senate, the speeches of no Senator 
commanded more respect and attention than his. Spanning 
two generations of statesmen, he had witnessed and partici- 
pated in the stormy scenes leading up to the Civil War, had 
been a prominent factor in that terrific struggle, had helped 
to shape the legislation of the reconstruction period, was a 
leader in the contests that followed to maintain the country's 
financial honor, and lived to see the United States take its 
place as the leading commercial nation of the world. His 
public service began under President Pierce in 1855, and 
ended in 1898, while William McKinley was Chief Executive. 
He was a Congressman and Senator under eleven Presidents 
and thirteen different National administrations, while his 
terms in the Senate exceeded those of any other member of 
that body. 

This record of achievement came to one who had no other 
advantages than a common school and academic education. 
Beginning life as a merchant and farmer, Senator Morrill was 
early conspicuous in leadership in a section of the country 
where wisdom is looked for in age rather than in youth. 
Winning the confidence of conservative Vermont, he held 
both her faith and affection to the end of his life. His early 
training fitted him for the particular sphere of his activities 
as the constructor of legislation for the promotion of the com- 

( 65 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



mercial growth of the United States. Author of the Morrill 
Tariff, his work is seen in all its revisions for more than a 
generation. He witnessed the growth of this country from a 
debtor to a creditor Nation as the result of policies he espoused 
and advocated. He came into the public service when sec- 
tionalism was predominant, yet he lived to see the United 
States firmly united by the same ties that Hamilton proposed 
for securing nationality. Our Constitution was born of the 
commercial necessities of the American people, and that Con- 
stitution has admirably fitted the wants of later generations 
as they have reached out to secure the commerce of the world. 
Senator Morrill had a great part in preserving and per- 
fecting the Republic the fathers had founded. His work was 
not in electrifying the people with passionate appeals, but in 
taking up the task where the orator and the enthusiast had 
left it, and then constructing the edifice on a sure and lasting 
foundation. Others have won greater contemporary praise, 
but few have deserved more encomiums than he for the fidel- 
ity of his labors in building for permanency. Full of years 
and honor, outliving the generation with which he began his 
public life, Senator Morrill's death was deeply regretted by 

the whole country. 

Yours truly 

Jacob H. Gallinger 
Hon. Wm. P. Dillingham 

United States Senate 



( 66 ) 



TRIBUTES 



FROM EX-SENATOR GEORGE F. EDMUNDS 

Aiken, S. C, March 21, 1910 
My Dear Governor: 

Your most courteous and kindly letter of the 7th instant, 
honoring me with an invitation to attend and participate in 
the memorial celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of 
the birth of the late Senator Justin S. Morrill, at Montpelier, 
on the 14th of April, was received here, where, or else- 
where in milder climes less strong and compelling than that 
of Vermont, the health of my family and myself makes it 
prudent to winter. I deeply regret that my health and the 
season of the year make it impossible to be present. 

I well remember where and when I first saw Mr. Morrill. 
It was in the summer of 1855 on a Vermont Central Railroad 
train making its way from Montpelier to White River Junction. 
I had the pleasure of being introduced to him by a mutual ac- 
quaintance, as a member of the younger bar at Burlington, 
and was most kindly and cordially received. He had just be- 
gun his long career of public service in which he died — crowned 
with ihe grateful affections of all his immediate constituents 
and with the admiration and respect of the whole country. 

Intimate association with Mr. Morrill for twenty-four 
years in the Senate, with never a cloud between us, made us 
brothers indeed. Noble, strong, brave and pure, his private 

( 67 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



and public life was a beneficence to our State and Country; 
and the celebration of this anniversary is both an incitement 
to emulation of his virtues and good works and a deserved 
honor, lovingly bestowed, in his memory. Though distant, I 
join in it with all my heart. 

Very sincerely yours 

George F. Edmunds 

His Excellency George H. Prouty 

Newport, Vermont 



FROM SENATOR NELSON W. ALDRICH 

Washington, D. C, April 5, 1910 
Dear Governor Prouty: 

It was my good fortune to have served seventeen years in 
the Senate with Senator Morrill, and to have been closely 
associated with him during that period in the membership 
of the Committee on Finance, of which he was chairman. 
His high standards and clear perception always furnished to 
his associates an example and an incentive for better service 
in their senatorial work. 

Vermont has furnished many illustrious names to the 
Senate roll of honor, but among these she has had no repre- 
sentative who has shown higher devotion to the public inter- 

( 68 ) 



TRIBUTES 



ests, or greater zeal, wisdom, and patriotism in the discharge 
of every duty than Justin S. Morrill. 

Very truly yours 

Nelson W. Aldrich 
His Excellency George H. Prouty 

Governor of the State of Vermont 



FROM SENATOR H. CABOT LODGE 

Washington, D. C, March II, iqio 
My Dear Senator Dillingham: 

I have received your letter of March 9th and I wish that 
I could be present to join in the memorial service which is 
to be held on the 14th of April in honor of Senator Morrill. 
He was one of the most conspicuous figures, not only in the 
Senate but in our public life, when I first came to Congress. 
I, of course, knew him in the Senate, as I had known him by 
reputation before, and I shared in the affection and profound 
respect with which he was regarded by the entire body of his 
fellow Senators. His high character, his great ability, his 
long and distinguished service, were an honor to the Senate 
and I am glad to think that the people of his own State are 
now to recall his memory and his services by a public meeting. 

Sincerely yours 
Hon. Wm. P. Dillingham H. Cabot Lodge 

United States Senate 

( 69 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



FROM EX-SENATOR WILLIAM E. CHANDLER 

Washington, D. C, April 10, 1910 
My Dear Senator: 

Mr. Morrill's presence and conversation were pleasing to 
me — whether in the Senate or in delightful interviews like 
that at his Vermont home, where Senator Proctor took me 
on a joyous visit. He had a character which may almost be 
called perfect. There was his natural intelligence heightened 
by his long and instructive experiences. In a practical way 
he grew to wisdom unsurpassable. He was a profitable 
counsellor on almost any subject, and I often availed myself 
of his friendship to put his judgment to use and test — seldom, 
if ever, to regret trusting it. I took his desk in the Senate 
after we had laid him to rest in the snows of the State he so 
loved and served. Next me sat Senator O. H. Piatt, and we 
talked of our friend not once but often. This is what I love 
to dwell upon almost entirely, — his sweetness of disposition. 
He was lovable in every fiber of his soul and this trait com- 
bined with an ever present sense of humor made personal 
intercourse with him most charming. I am glad of this op- 
portunity to pay a brief tribute to one of the finest of men — an 
American statesman of the noblest type. 

Yours very truly 
Hon. Wm. P. Dillingham William E. Chandler 

United States Senator 

( 70 ) 



TRIBUTES 



FROM SENATOR WILLIAM P. FRYE 

Washington, D. C, March 12, igio 
My Dear Governor Prouty: 

The people of Vermont do well in celebrating the centen- 
nial of the birth of Justin S. Morrill, as they did well in hon- 
oring him, and honoring themselves, by continuing him as 
their Senator until the end of his long life. 

He was a worthy representative of a worthy State. His 
record was as pellucid and undefiled as the waters of its lakes 
and streams; and his character as rugged and impregnable 
as its granite hills. 

To those of us in the Senate who long served with him 

and survive him, his memory is a benediction. Even after 

his physical powers had waned, we listened to him with profit 

and delight. His latest speeches showed no abatement of 

that keen analysis and delicious humor which illuminated the 

dryest subject. As chairman of the great Committee on 

Finance he was a potent figure in all the councils of the Senate, 

and he left an enviable record of achievement and patriotic 

service. T7 , 

Very truly yours 

William P. Frye 
Hon. George H. Prouty 

Montpelier, Vermont 

( 71 ) 



JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL 



RESOLUTIONS OF STRAFFORD GRANGE 

Whereas, Senator Justin S. Morrill, born in and a be- 
loved citizen of our town, whose one hundredth birthday is 
to be observed by the people of the State, at Montpelier, 
April 14, 1910: 

Resolved, That we, the members of Strafford Grange, P. 
of H., also of the Justin S. Morrill Pomona Grange, send 
these resolutions to be read at this centennial. 

Resolved, That as a citizen and friend he was respected 
and loved ; as a statesman, a man of whom all were proud and 
all delighted to honor. 

Resolved, That in his death this town has lost a citizen 
whose upright and noble life was a standard of emulation to 
his fellows, and whose utmost endeavors were exerted for the 
welfare and prosperity of his native State and Town. 

Resolved, That we may always revere his name and honor 
his memory. R A Stickney 

Mrs. G. W. Dearborn 
W. F. Scribner 

Committee on Resolutions 



( 72 ) 




LJBRARY OF CONGRESS 



II HUH 



i ii ii I 




